Details

LOT 1794

Post Medieval Bronze Deer Statuette

19TH CENTURY A.D.

6 1/8 in. (610 grams total, 15.5 cm including stand).

Modelled standing with head slightly turned, with long ears and small antlers; tail curled against the rump; mounted on a custom-made display stand. [No Reserve]

Provenance

From a collection acquired on the UK art market from various auction houses and collections mostly before 2000.
From an important Cambridgeshire estate; thence by descent.

Literature

Cf. Boucher, S. & Tassinari, S., Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine a Lyon: Bronzes Antiques I. Inscriptions, Statuaire, Vaisselle Lyon, 1976, item 96, for type; see also a similar statuette in Louvre, inventory no.214498, in Boucher, S., Recherches sur les bronzes figurés de Gaule pré-Romaine et Romaine, Rome, Ecole Française de Rome, ( Bibliothèque des écoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, 228), 1976, p.40, no. 380.

Footnotes

Many deposits of Gallo-Roman statuettes contain votive statuettes not particularly linked to the classical artistic style. The temple deposits in which these animalistic statuettes (series of stags or boars) were discovered were certainly Roman, but the animals could have belonged to cults of Celtic origin.